Sympathy for the Devil
by Elcolo9
Summary: As he looks back on the Antimorphs and the Beast, Puck reflects on his life and existance, and remembers all the things he's seen...


Sympathy for the Devil  
  
"Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name..." -Rolling Stones  
  
It had ended. The great civil war, devastating in its effect, had succeeded in stopping the Great War of the Machine and bringing the armies of Hell to a grinding halt. The power-greedy Shrike usurpers had instigated a brutal rebellion against the Dark Lord himself, and so had all the Empire that had been built over a thousand millennia, been torn down.  
  
Too many territories had been lost; the Maiar had easily retaken them as the Demons squabbled amongst themselves for power. The blasted dimensions could never be repaired, and remained damning testaments to the corrupting flame of the Machine.  
  
And worst of all...that flame had been lost to the cosmos. That Stone...that simple Stone, had been cut from the hand of the Dark Lord, and thrown into time and space, in the final climactic duel between the Dark Lord Mephisto, and his greatest Lieutenant, the Lord of Treason, Crayak, the Shrike.  
  
Crayak had fled, taking his own universe and fortifying it as a stronghold. Hundreds of the other Shrike-Lords had been executed in the aftermath. Billions dead...  
  
But he was still here. And as long as the Devils Jester survived, the party would go on.  
  
"Shit happens. You deal with it. Tyrants rise, empires fall, the guy in the background repeats the process. That's how it's always worked, and it's good that way."  
  
He was no ordinary Demon, but a former mortal, of a long dead species once known as the Haas. Long ago he had forfeited his soul and betrayed his entire race to a Demon invasion, in exchange for the ultimate gift: the blood of a Dracyak, a Drac-Lord. His life had been extended until the ending of time. His powers of illusion, corruption and manipulation were among the finest in the multiverse.  
  
Too many names was he called by. One race, the Andalites, had called him 'Jikra-Ilrahan,' meaning 'Fire Sprite' in their tongue. To a race on a blasted world called Orkan V, he had inspired a bloodthirsty race known as the Orcs into an alliance with the Demons, manifesting as Azog the Sly. At least, that was what they called him.  
  
But it was with a race known as Man, that this being finally found his calling.  
  
Man...what a sickening mud-species. On one hand, physically weak but mentally extremely potent. On the other, disgustingly moral and ethical or brutally evil, murderous and conquering, taking slaves and wiping out entire regions in a blood-feud.  
  
Yes...Man. Man was the race he liked the best, much like a master cares for a beloved dog that sits on his lap and does his bidding. And if it got too much out of hand, simply shoot it.  
  
And so he went to them, as a friend, as an enemy, in the skin of a thousand different persons. Working behind the scenes, manipulating them.  
  
In several universes, he befriended these Men to the point where they joined forces with the Demon-kinds, granted exceedingly long lives and allowed to occupy several great Hell dimensions and assist in any small conflicts that broke out. They became the Darklings, Dark Men, Demon at heart and Human in skin.  
  
Oh, Man. What a disgusting race. And yet, so versatile.  
  
However, now the Stone had been lost. A new era had begun, one where the balance of power was more or less equalized between the forces of the Power and the legions of Mephisto. In this new world, one such as he would be quite useful...  
  
In many worlds, he was known as Puck. Puck, it seemed to have a ring to it, and he took that word as his adopted name. He would do anything to distance himself from the horrible deed that gave him his power, and so the last of the Haas became Puck, the Interloper, the Jester of Hell, Poisoner of the minds of the weak, spreading discord and division wherever he could.  
  
Puck's master wanted his Stone back...by any means necessary. Without it, the great wars, the conquest, would be ended, stalled in their tracks...Puck was one of the few who had the power to locate, and retrieve it.  
  
And so, on a small, worthless, blue ocean world, one of many inhabited by man, in a generally looked over and unimportant universe, Puck established himself. In a city in a desert, where three of the great continents met, he made arcane deals with a young woman, a sorceress. The sorceress was young, and had not yet known mans touch. The deals that gave her unnatural ability also opened the doors to her soul to the malevolent reaches of the Machine...a terrible power was implanted within her...slowly the Machine poured within her body, flooding her mind with its dark forces, undetected, biding their time...  
  
Then, the plan of the Interloper began to take effect. He had, at various times, as a Haas, mated with the females of his race. Six sons had he fathered...and he himself was the youngest of seven brothers. If he took this woman sorceress, he would have the child of an unbroken line...the seventh son of a seventh son.  
  
He told her to wait for him by midnight, and she did. He appeared out of thin air and accosted her, bringing her to the ground. With his hooves he trampled her, and despite her screams, forced himself onto her. And into her...  
  
A dark seed of evil is born...  
  
Earth, City of Gomorrah...  
  
Puck had just taken the bitch, and oh, had it felt so damn good. Finally, he'd done what no one else could do, made the seventh son of a seventh son. Scion of an unbroken line, with all the power and glory that came with it. Yeah, the seventh son...they always had powers, that other kids didn't. Extremely powerful, demigods even. For Good or Evil...and this one would be Evil as sin.  
  
The Satyr-like Demon strutted through the streets of the city of Gomorrah, looking to the windows around him, each closing to block his view, but with the inhabitants peering on out of fear...they knew full well know he was, and knew better then to fuck with him.  
  
Puck approached the last building in the street. He hadn't gotten any action in a long time, and he needed a drink. Kicking in the door, Puck entered the Four Winds Bar, a seedy establishment owned by a one-eyed former mercenary for one of the local tribes. Puck had drunk here a lot, and the ale couldn't have been better.  
  
"Barkeep! Give me ale, hell, get one for the whole house, I feel charitable."  
  
"Who in the red hell do you think you are?" Shouted the barkeeper, "You don't just barge in here and kick in my door without payin' for it!"  
  
Puck looked back and saw the door splintered at the point where his hoof had kicked it.  
  
Turning back, he said, "Call me Dezmadonus," a name he'd gone by in the past, "Ah! Eternal Night! That crazy kid of mine will surely prove a sight!"  
  
"He's not human!" Shouted one man, "The Devil walks among us!"  
  
"The Devil? I'm a Devil, yeah, but the real badass is on his way here...ha! Drink up, lads, drink to good health for my boy-Power forbid I get a girl out of that whore."  
  
Slowly, the barkeeper poured out a dozen or so ales and dispersed them around the room. With caution, people drank and set their mugs down.  
  
"Now that we've all had a good drink, I'll give you a little hint on how to make it through the next day..."  
  
The patrons leaned in to hear him...  
  
"Run! Run to the fucking hills! Run for your lives!" Puck shouted, cackling, walking off into the cold desert night...  
  
...............................................................................  
  
A few thousand years later, a lot had changed...  
  
Pucks kid had come out and completed the line, and true to fortune, Evil had claimed the Seventh Son. Something almost too powerful to be controlled tore its way out of the mother's womb and razed the city of Gomorrah to the ground. Days later, Sodom was attacked and burnt to ashes.  
  
Maybe a dozen made it out alive...the ones who had heeded the warning of Puck.  
  
But still this child...this monster...this...Beast...was out of control. It tore its way across a hundred worlds, murdering millions, causing unfathomable chaos and discord. Even after it had passed, the inhabitants of those dimensions slaughtered each other, for the sheer malevolence that the Beast had left behind was too powerful for even the greatest minds to withstand.  
  
Eventually, it arrived in Scortch. A Bastard child of a half Drac, a virulent plague upon the skin of the multiverse. It could not be stopped, no matter what was thrown at it. Scores of Dracs, legions of Darklings and Low-Demons, it entered the great city of Necropolis and leaped through the portal...the portal to the home dimension.  
  
The Beast was in Tartarus.  
  
On the other side, it was greeted with everything that Hell could muster against it. The High Demons, Ovilkhan, Azorath, Beliel, Lurconis, Duriel, Asmodan, and Ellyrius, greatest of Hell's Spawn, engaged it in mortal combat...but each in turn were pushed back. In the end, the Beast made its way to the foot of the Dark Tower, Gharanz-Tyre, itself. At this point, it met its match.  
  
The Dark Lord himself cut a might blow to the Beast, his mighty Mace, Krom, tearing out its soul, leaving its body to fall and turn to dust.  
  
The soul of the Beast had no body...but it was powerful...too powerful...  
  
.................................................................................  
  
Puck stood, calmly, beside his Master, the smoke clearing from the final skirmish with the Beast, the dust still hanging in the air. Air, here in Tartarus, was fire itself. This was a dimension that no mortal , or non- Dracen life form, for that matter, could survive in, filled to the brim with Dracs, Demons, and the most powerful of the Hell-kinds to ever exist...and the Beast had cut a bloody swath through them all.  
  
"Quinz," said his Master, in he icy, malevolent tone that he used to express displeasure, "we have a problem, here."  
  
And he only called Puck by his birth name when he was really, really mad.  
  
"Yes, Master." Said Puck, dutifully. The Dark Lord did not look at him, but out across the lands north of the Tower, off the steep plateau of Targoroth. It was almost like, no, it was exactly like he couldn't care less about Puck, standing beside him. No, the Dark Lord could dispose of his servant at the slightest whim and not think twice about it.  
  
"Our problem," hissed the Dark Lord, "Is that you have, with your lechery, visited this despicable...vile...thing...upon us. It came very close, Quinz. Too close."  
  
Puck knew what his Master had meant by that: The Beast could very well have overthrown him, had it been older, more intelligent, and had time to learn to master its powers effectively.  
  
"It is no threat now, my Lord. You have defeated it...my error is repaired, is it not?"  
  
"It would seem that way...if not for the song that this spirit sings to me," the Dark Lord said, his gaze not moving, "This Beast, as it is called, is an agent of a power inside us, all of us, of our kind. You were not the father, I say, but the vessel. Your seed, your lechery for a mortal, was what gave it corporeal form. This was your...seventh son, was it not?"  
  
Puck nodded, and his Master recognized it.  
  
"And you yourself...are a seventh son. What a feat, an unbroken line gave it the chance to come forth into this Multiverse. It sought to claim my rightful place, as the Master of Fate itself...and you made it possible."  
  
Even though the renegade Maiar known as Mephisto-a title that meant The Great Hate, but once named Marius, Destined for Might, the name meant- said it, Puck felt as if he wanted to turn hoof and run, run away, snuggle in with his mother and never have to face what he knew was coming next.  
  
He would likely die this day.  
  
"Uh...yes, my Lord. But...the threat is vanquished! It no longer has corporeal form, and it cannot do us any harm in this state..."  
  
"You, Quinz, are a true fool. What has no form cannot be kept in check. What cannot be kept in check will inevitably restore itself. Why do you think I created Azorath, greatest of my Demons, from my vanquished foe?"  
  
Puck gulped...Azorath had once been Gray'Ang, bravest and noblest of the Maiar, and a true friend of Marius...until Gray'Ang had come to get revenge on his former kinsman, for the murder of his brother, Darius. The battle had ended in Gray'Ang twisted, tortured and mutilated into a Demon form a shadow of his former self.  
  
"A...fitting point, my Lord."  
  
"This essence of your Beast shall haunt us day by day until it reclaims its former power, and in that hour, it will destroy us."  
  
Silence.  
  
"And yet," the Dark Lord continued, "there may be a solution."  
  
Puck exhaled, in temporary relief, "What is that, my Lord?"  
  
"We split it...dilute it...divide it...all of its soul, down to the smallest fibre of its being. Then..." He stopped, in thought.  
  
A few moments of silence passed...Puck too terrified to break it.  
  
"...Bind them. To mortals. Your...humans. Yes, one in each dimension. Humans...with Demon souls."  
  
The Dark Lord laughed, "We may even get some use out of them, yes, indeed..."  
  
Puck said, "My Lord?"  
  
"I desire nothing more in this life than my Stone, my most powerful weapon...but it is lost to me. But you know as well as I do, that the destruction-not its corruption, but utter annihilation, can show us where the Stone is, and make it stand outside reality, able to be retrieved."  
  
What? Madness...what was this leading to?  
  
"Are you saying, my Lord," said Puck, carefully, "That we send this Beast forth to destroy the universe it inhabits, to destroy them completely?"  
  
"Yes..." hissed the Dark Lord, "One mortal man, so easily corrupted, in each dimension, bound with your spawn as its soul, its destiny to destroy. From the sheer power of the whole, the shards should, in themselves, prove sufficient."  
  
Could it even be done? No...no one had ever tried anything like this before. To cause a line of humans, the same man in each dimension, to be born without a mortal soul? To replace the core of their essence with Demon? No...  
  
"My Lord...a mortal with a Demon soul...would that not make him, a...Vampire?"  
  
"Indeed..." Hissed the Dark Lord, "I have foreseen this..."  
  
Puck doubted weather or not his Master could actually 'foresee' anything. He may call himself the 'Master of Fate,' that didn't mean he truly was.  
  
"Then we shall leave them with fragments of their soul...like a scale, you see...the mortal on one end, the influence of this Beast on the other. The Beast, however, shall outweigh the mortality."  
  
"And...if it fails, my Lord?"  
  
The Dark Lord's voice burned.  
  
"It shall not fail."  
  
.................................................................................  
  
Egypt, 950 BC  
  
The portal opened, letting Puck's hoof step through onto the rich sands of the land that the humans called Egypt. What a land, home of an ancient and powerful (by human standards) empire, this was.  
  
And here, Ovilkhan had chosen to make his bid for glory.  
  
Puck looked out over an open battlefield, pyramids and temples in the horizon. It was dusk, but the sky was a filthy mix of black and red, scorched by lightening. A battle for the fate of this land...perhaps this entire world, was in play.  
  
"Ah...if only I'd set a Beast in this world, in this time. Things could get even more interesting."  
  
But Ovilkhan, exiled from Tartarus for displeasing the Dark Lord, was pretty much alone here. Oh, he had a few hundred Dracs, a legion of humanoid shape-shifters known as 'Shifty's", but not much else.  
  
He did, however, brandish the Medusa Shield, and with it, all its power to absorb life, and multiply it within his own power. That shield made him unstoppable.  
  
The High Demon himself hovered in the air, a hundred feet over the desert plain, his two eagle wings flapping in the wind. A humanoid form he had, the two eagle wings made him appear powerful and majestic. He looked down at his foes over a wolf's snout, the shield strapped over his wrist. A formidable power, he was.  
  
And he knew Puck was watching.  
  
"So, uh, Ovilkhan. You think you can do this?"  
  
"Back thee down, half-Drac! I shall prove you for the unbelieving coward you are. Your ineptitude over your duty goes unnoticed, my first small mistake gains me exile! I would smite you now, if not for the aura your Master affords you. You cannot be touched."  
  
Puck smiled smugly. It was so. He was invincible to harm for the time being, even from a High Demon of Ovilkhan's stature.  
  
"Hey, you're the one who fucked things up, pal. Not me."  
  
"I ordered a premature invasion of a small dimension, resulting in the loss of several million Dracs! Not even a fraction of what we had to throw in, not even one of our greatest defeats!"  
  
"Yeah, but you still disobeyed our boss. Plus, you did fuck up, what with forging gates for the Tower that were just a little-too-thin. That did, after all, let...him get through to duel with our master."  
  
"You are a coward, Quinz." "But I'm powerful. So what's the problem?"  
  
Ovilkhan spit at the ground, "You sicken me."  
  
Before Puck could reply, the drums of war disrupted his train of thought. Humans! Thousands, hundreds of thousands of humans, were forming on the horizon and marching towards them, armed and ready for war.  
  
And not just the desert-dwelling, brown skinned humans of Egypt, but black- skinned ones...hazel coloured ones, olive coloured...yes, on their banners they bore the standards of Egypt, Judea, Persia, Rome, Troy, Sparta, hundreds of kingdoms, big and small, far and wide, had sent an army against the invading Demon.  
  
And all of them were about to die.  
  
The army was armed with swords, spears, axes...small shields. They would not prove a match for the might of one of Hell's Finest.  
  
A horn sounded as the human rabble moved closer and conflict erupted. Ovilkhan cut a bloody swath through the hordes of human soldiers, they died by the scores.  
  
The sand burned with blood...Puck walked amongst the crowds of humans, some being physically destroyed, many losing their souls and very bodies to the Medusa Shield...Ovilkhan was at the zenith of his power.  
  
And then, a spear...a Persian spear! It pierced Ovilkhan's side, jolting him; the shield fell from his gauntlet...and aimed directly at him!  
  
Ovilkhan let loose a great and horrible echoing cry...as his very essence, his very soul, was taken inside of the weapon he had used on so many. Trapped forever...forever...  
  
Puck laughed, and watched as the few hundred remnants of a once massive army took the shield, its power now quelled, and hid it in a distant tomb under the Sahara sands. He made a note of it. Who knows? It might prove useful someday...  
  
Humans: they could always be full of surprises.  
  
Good and bad...  
  
...............................................................................  
  
Judea, 30 AD  
  
The man who called himself Jesus Christ was being led to his execution on Golgotha, and Puck walked alongside him. Invisible to the eyes of Jews, Arabs and Romans all around the procession that trudged through the narrow streets of Jerusalem, Puck knew that this Maiar-in-Man skin could feel him, could see him.  
  
And he could hear him. It hurt the man-God to hear Puck's sneering.  
  
"This is what you are dying for...for...this," Spat Puck, "Humanity. Mortals! They hate you. They beat you. They defile you. They are about to murder you. And yet you seek to take all their...sin...into you?"  
  
Christ did not speak, but kept on bearing the heavy cross, already stained by the blood and wounds that covered his frail body.  
  
"You sicken me, you know that? You are what you say you are, yeah. But you can't do it. You can't SAVE people who don't WANT to be saved. It's a choice they make, and any ones with sense choose the road that leads to me."  
  
No humans really knew about the Machine, about the Power. Their religions were more or less accurate, but none totally authentic. The truth of the matter was far simpler than any Prophet made it out to be.  
  
So here they had the man called Christ, who called himself the son of God. A Maiar in man's form. A powerful one, too. Not the first, not the last. He was a true Prophet. And Puck didn't like Prophets.  
  
"Take a good, long, hard look at this world, Jesus. Look at what you are dying for. It's a waste! It is DISGUSTING! Mortals, we're so much better than them. Don't let them murder you...I can get you out of here..."  
  
Maiar had changed sides before...no reason this Christ guy couldn't be tempted.  
  
Sadly, Jesus looked up at Puck, silently, tears flowing down his face. Tears and blood. As he finished looking, he again lifted the heavy wooden cross and began to shamble forward.  
  
Puck watched as Christ and his Roman escort went to Golgotha, where he would be crucified. It was no big deal...he was, in the end, dead. And limited by the powers of Good, how powerful could this guy be?  
  
"Not very," Puck muttered, "In a couple of years, who's gonna remember him?"  
  
Laughing, Puck kept walking with the procession. Nothing like a good, torturous death to help pass the day. And, as good Jesus as any man.  
  
My Beast is the opposite of him...sort of an Anti-Christ, thought Puck, laughing at the thought.  
  
Anti-Christ...I like the sound of that one...  
  
Earth, Transylvania, 435 AD  
  
In the dense, mountainous forests of south eastern Europe, the Shrike Tyrak, Lord of Doom, stood toe-to-toe with the human cult of Lathos.  
  
Yes...Lathos, the Maiar of Prophecy, the Wind Lord. He had survived the attempt on his life, and re-incarnated himself in mortal form, hundreds of millennia later...on Earth.  
  
The tall, purple haired human man stood facing Tyrak, his eyes burning a brilliant violet, his youthful, adolescent form handsome and bold. His voice radiated sagely.  
  
"You shall not pass, Tyrak, black flame of Tartarus! You shall not hold that which you seek!"  
  
Here on Earth...this tribe of cultists had rallied around Lathos, and Tyrak, one of the most powerful and loyal of the Shrikes had found their ancient, secret prophecies...made by Lathos himself... This is the dimension that the Stone would come to...in about 1500 years, local time. All Tyrak needed to do was report back to his master...the invasion could commence, this universe would fall, and in 1500 years...the Demons could grab back their Stone without any problems one way or the other.  
  
"You shall not have it!" Boomed Lathos, his body silhouetted by the roaring bonfire that blazed to the side of Tyrak and he.  
  
And in the shadows to the side, Puck watched with merriment and glee.  
  
The Shrike faced of Lathos and his followers emotionlessly. Like all Shrikes, he was a few heads taller than a man, a simple humanoid shape of morphing and flowing black ooze, the stuff of pure, concentrated evil, intertwined with the remnants of his soul and the very fabric of time itself, giving the Shrike its great powers. A single, blood red eye sat cycloptic in the middle of its forehead.  
  
No, Lathos the Prophet...I shall!  
  
Tyrak leapt at Lathos. Lathos leapt at Tyrak, and their bodies met in a clash, purple and black smashing into each other. Each opponent was throwing everything he had at the other...  
  
In the end, Lathos beat down Tyrak and held him in the air with purple beams of energy, then cast him to the newly built stronghold on the horizon, in the darkest mountains, protected by deep and forbidding forests. There Tyrak would remain in a dungeon, trapped, until he was released...  
  
When the deed was one, one of Lathos' followers approached him. A young man of twenty five, he was older in body than Lathos, but gave him a reverent treatment.  
  
"Is it done, Father? Is the creature done? Are we safe?"  
  
Breathing heavily, Lathos said in a gravely voice, "No, Himmler. It will never be done."  
  
The cultist, Himmler, spoke again, "When we are gone, then, Father, who will remember any of this? Who will guard the creature?"  
  
Not looking at his loyal follower, Lathos spoke, "You will tell your son when he is born. He will be born in Germania, won't he?"  
  
"Yes, Father."  
  
"Tell him, so that you may never forget."  
  
And 1500 years later, in the line of Himmler, the myth of the dark creature of great power, was alive and thriving in the mind of the last descendant of that cultist.  
  
The Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler.  
  
..............................................................................  
  
The "Taggart" Universe, Tunguska, 1908...  
  
The small meteorite fell to earth, its aura beaming a brilliant crimson. It was a small meteorite, roughly six or seven inches in diameter, small enough to fit inside the palm of a large sized hand. Nothing special, to most casual observers.  
  
This small hunk of rock had been floating between worlds, solar systems, and galaxies for a few million years, longer than man and Maiar could count. To a human onlooker, it looked like a nice, expensive seeming, shiny, and strangely shaped ruby.  
  
It hit the ground at 7:17 AM, local time. Its impact created an explosion equivalent of a dozen megatons of TNT. It flattened millions of tree's and scorched the countryside with a fireball resembling a nuclear blast. Entire herds of reindeer perished, local villages were vaporized. The explosion lit up all seismic monitoring equipment for thousands of miles. Its radiance was visible in the sky in England.  
  
It left no crater in the ground, no sign that it had ever been there, had it not been for the chaos and destruction that is had brought with its arrival. New snows came, burying the small ruby under a few feet of thin snow and ice.  
  
Months later, a young Russian Communist dissident by the name of Trotsky was in the process of escaping from one of the Tsars Siberian prison camps. Stumbling through the arctic snows, on the verge of death, Trotsky, freezing, tripped over ice and rock formations under the snow. Had he stepped a few feet to the left or right, cosmic history, the ruby may never have been located, and life on Earth and throughout the cosmos may have been entirely different.  
  
In any case, Trotsky landed flat on his face, half a foot in front of the precious artefact. He was consumed immediately by the rock, and had a desire to take it. Something like the little devil on his shoulder was whispering to him, something telling him that this rock could make him great and powerful.  
  
Pocketing the rock, Trotsky, with renewed vigour, continued his trek across the frozen forest. He would reach civilization and be a free man.  
  
And, safe in his pocket, rested the Ragnarok Stone. It had come to earth at the start of a new century...  
  
And this century would be as bloody as the stone was red.  
  
Bloody, indeed.  
  
...............................................................................  
  
It was amazing how the Ragnarok Stone impacted this particular dimension, and all the surrounding 'break off' dimensions, as well.  
  
The Stone was taken from Trotsky in Budapest, where it found its way to Sarajevo, Bosnia. From there, it radiated evil, distrust and agitation all throughout Europe. In 1914, its influence exploded in the First World War...  
  
Retreating Austrian soldiers took the stone, along with other spoils of war, back to Vienna. From Vienna, through an unknown sequence of events, the Stone found itself in a small Belgian town known as Ypres, in the home of a wealthy landowner. When German troops overran that home, they ransacked it...among them, a young Corporal named Hitler...  
  
.................................................................................  
  
Ypres, Belgium, August, 1916...  
  
Hitler bent into the trunk to pick up the shiny red ruby that had caught his eye...what could it be?  
  
Yes...what could it be? The young Corporal wondered.  
  
Holding it in his hands, he was amazed by the warmth of this stone flooding through his hands and body, and by the piercing, radiant glow it emitted.  
  
I'll just hold onto this...for safe-keeping. Placing it in his pocket, he rushed off to the front.  
  
The Stone had chosen this young man. This man would hold it for the next few decades...and it would work through him. The Stone would be his master, and the Corporal, his willing servant... .................................................................................  
  
The 'Schmidt' universe, December 29th, 1944...  
  
The Ardennes forest blazed with the fire of battle as American troops slowly pushed back the determined and embattled forces of the German Wehrmacht in the last great battle of the war. The forests outside the small village of Bastogne were a deathtrap, German artillery raining down on American men, machine gun bullets tearing apart thousands of men every day, as the Nazi war machine put up one final, desperate stand to keep their enemy from reaching the borders of the Fatherland. In the last days of mans greatest war, the German Reich unleashed every last secret weapon and devious trick in its arsenal, and in this particular universe, that included a 30-something Waffen-SS commando by the name of David Schmidt.  
  
David Schmidt was no normal SS-man. He was a Beast...and he was a sinister mesh of man and machine...a German Ubersoldaat.  
  
Super-Soldier.  
  
Six feet tall, his face obscured behind a domed coal-scuttle helmet engraved with the SS rune and behind a gas-mask, he was a walking one man army. His chest and torso were re-enforced to make him impervious to small arms fire, his left arm a fully-automatic heavy machine gun and experimental grenade launcher. His right, concealing a nerve-gas projector in his palm, he could deal death and take unlimited punishment. The Swastika's that decorated his uniform and body-armour let the world know exactly what side he was on. And here he was in a ditch in a frozen forest, shooting accurately at Patton's best men, loving every minute of it.  
  
Teamed up with SS Standardenfuhrer Otto Skorzeny and his elite Waffen-SS commando unit, he was practically unstoppable.  
  
"Ach! Gott ein Himmell, Skorzeny, they just keep coming!" He barked, unleashing a salvo of machine gun rounds.  
  
Skorzeny's reply came in an Austrian accent, the massive scar on the right side of his face stretching into a jovial grin, "I know! Really makes this fight intense, doesn't it?"  
  
Pausing for a moment, Schmidt laughed behind his mask, "We're the most dangerous men in Europe, Skorzeny, and we can't hold back that bastard Patton. How are we supposed to stop him from crossing the Rhine in the spring? Or for that matter, keep the bloody Bolsheviks from capturing our beloved Fuhrer and carrying him to Moscow in a cage?"  
  
Skorzeny emptied another burst of his MP-40 into a group of distant American GI's and shouted, "We make them pay for every inch, and we will not let them set foot on our Fatherland! Those are our orders, and you damn well where they come from, old friend."  
  
Schmidt did know damn well where their unit's orders came from, men named Kaltenbrunner, Himmler and Hitler, in order. He also knew that an order from the Fuhrer didn't guarantee that it would happen. After all, he had claimed that the Russians would fall in six weeks, and on the Reich's eastern border they were overrunning the valiant Wehrmacht and SS-men.  
  
This war would soon be over, and when it ended, what would become of Schmidt? He was a freak, half man, half machine, a walking weapon. The Americans, British and especially the Bolsheviks would kill him, both for what he was and what he'd done. Or worse...they would enslave him, experiment on him, and turn his guns on the German people...  
  
No! It wouldn't come to that...no, no, no! Another machine gun burst let loose from his arm-cannon as his cannon gears switched around and launching a grenade. The roar of the artillery shells was deafening...  
  
"The ultimate weapon of history's most depraved civilization. Good to know I had a hand in it. Adolph, Joseph and Hideiki, three of my favourite humans, driving their world into hell. Wonderful!"  
  
It wasn't Skorzeny talking, no. Schmidt stopped firing and looked around for the person who had spoken in such a sneering, sarcastic tone about the war. Had he just called the Reich a depraved situation? "Yeah, the crooked cross, the hammer and sickle, the rising sun. A world war! I never thought anyone would be capable of it. But you humans never fail to astound me. I mean, you even made factories for murder! All three of you! You're Demon as they come. 'Specially you, Schmidt."  
  
"What?" Shouted Schmidt, "Who shouted that?"  
  
Skorzeny looked to him, "What? What did you say?"  
  
"Nothing...I must be hearing things."  
  
A Panzer rumbled through the lines behind them, manoeuvring between the trees. A Wehrmacht Colonel stuck his head up through the entry hatch and shouted through a bullhorn, "Retreat! Retreat back to the Siegfried Line! Conserve the fight in you, you will be supplemented by fresh SS and Hitler Youth units, the Americans will be pushed back to the sea when we can muster forces for another attack..."  
  
"On whose authority?" Demanded an SS man further back to the rear of the trench.  
  
The Panzer Colonel yelled back, "This is from General Dietrich himself!" And rode on back to spread the orders.  
  
Skorzeny grumbled, "If only we still had Rommel, eh?" Grinning, he continued, "Well, you heard the Colonel! Pull back, we'll fortify more positions and kick the shit out of them from further into the forest!"  
  
The ragged, patched together unit of Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht, and Hitler Jugend men pulled even further back to area's firmly in German control. Along the way, they hooked up with a few small Gestapo units, deep into the rugged Ardennes forest. Schmidt talked with one of them, a good Aryan type named Friedrich.  
  
"We've been ordered to pull back, of course, but our unit is being directed to Buchenwald to assist in the clean up..."  
  
"Buchenwald? What's that?"  
  
"Shut up, you fool! That's confidential information, and he doesn't need to know!" Another Gestapo man growled not far in behind Schmidt and Friedrich.  
  
Not long after, Skorzeny caught up to David and told him what he'd heard.  
  
"We're going back into Germany, we're being ordered to assist in something called the 'clean up' at this Buchenwald place..."  
  
Schmidt sighed, "Gott damn, Skorzeny! We're too valuable to be wasted on this! We should be off at the front fighting the Americans!"  
  
Skorzeny smiled, in the mischievous way he often did when he knew something that no one else did. "After Buchenwald, we get to go to the East front. Fight the Bolsheviks."  
  
That news got a smile out of Schmidt as well, "Brilliant! Turn our unit loose on those Communist untermenschen, eh?"  
  
"That is the plan, David," Skorzeny said, "That is the plan."  
  
The tired and weary unit reached Buchenwald by January 4th, hungry and worn from the long trek.  
  
"Let's hurry up and finish this shit!" Shouted Schmidt as he walked through the tall barbed-wire gate that surrounded the Buchenwald compound, "What kind of camp is this, anyway? Labour? What are we supposed to clean up, eh? Important machinery? Munitions?"  
  
His questions were answered as the few dozen SS troops in the unit entered the camp, and their eyes were met by a horrible sight...  
  
A few hundred men, mostly all men, dressed in ripped prison rags, their faces too thin, and bones sticking out of their skin. They looked like terrified walking corpses, huddled together in the camp courtyard.  
  
The smell was overpowering. Skorzeny retched over and began to vomit.  
  
"This is all that is left," Said Friedrich, "The rest worked themselves to death, or starved, or we shot them."  
  
"What...what kind of camp is this?" Whispered Schmidt, his eyes gazing at the pitiful mass of people...human people...  
  
"A concentration camp. For Jews. Gypsies...Russians. Communists and trouble- makers. But mostly Jews."  
  
Hitler had spoken wildly about getting rid of all the Jews...most respectable Aryans had agreed with him...but this...this...this was Hellish.  
  
"We're...supposed to kill them?"  
  
"Yes," Said Friedrich, "So that the Americans don't find them. No evidence to pin this on us."  
  
"I'm not a murderer..." Whispered Schmidt, looking around in pity and disgust.  
  
"Just shut up and order your men to fire, will you? This is what they deserve. We don't have all day."  
  
David Schmidt looked at Skorzeny, who looked as shocked and sickened as David felt. No cocky grin was on his face. He didn't like this one bit...but he loaded his MP-40 nonetheless.  
  
"Skorzeny...for Gods sake, we're not murderers! We're soldiers!"  
  
"An order...David...is an order."  
  
Schmidt took one last look at the Jews...dead and dying in a mass in the camp called Buchenwald. This was going to be a wholesale slaughter.  
  
"No."  
  
Friedrich stared at him, wide-eyed, "What? What did you just say?"  
  
"I said no, Friedrich. I'm not going to shoot any of these people, and neither are you."  
  
"Schmidt, these are the enemies of the Reich. We have been ordered to exterminate them. You will do your duty or I shall have you shot as a traitor." His voice was cold as all the ice in Norway.  
  
"No."  
  
Friedrich drew his Lugar and aimed it at Schmidt's chest. "Then I'll kill you."  
  
He fired two shots, bouncing harmlessly off Schmidt's armoured chassis.  
  
The Gestapo man stared at him in wide eyed disbelief, as did man of the other men in the SS band, "How did you...what are you?"  
  
Schmidt looked at Friedrich...at Skorzeny...at the SS men he had fought beside for months.  
  
He knew exactly what he was.  
  
"I am David. And you are going to get what you deserve."  
  
He opened fire with his machine gun on his left hand, cutting down Friedrich his men behind him. With his right palm he sprayed and directed a stream of deadly nerve gas towards the remaining SS men. They fired their weapons, but did no real damage. He pumped the air full of nerve gas, choking everyone within a dozen meters of him.  
  
To his side, Skorzeny squeezed off a few shots at him, and as he fell down, gasping for air, his trigger finger squeezed and emptied the MP-40's magazine into the air.  
  
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to all the events that had led to this point. Turning his back on his dead, former comrades, Schmidt looked to the large group of prisoners huddled together in the camp.  
  
They were dead. They had choked on the gas.  
  
"No...no..." Moaned Schmidt, "I...I tried to save them...but...they died anyway...why?"  
  
The same sneering voice that David had heard earlier called out, "Because, my boy, you killed them!"  
  
Schmidt whirled around to see the Devil himself...or at least a good impression of him. Cloven hoofed, red skin, small horns, goatee...an evil satyr.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"Ah, pleased to meet you, Schmidt. Hope you guess my name."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Yup, you are quite exceptional. I just know that you'll do great things in this world. Go on, make daddy proud."  
  
In a flash of light, he was gone.  
  
Schmidt stood in stunned silence. What had just transpired left him without words. He had just murdered all those prisoners...he had just destroyed his friends and comrades in arms. He had betrayed his nation. He was a walking army.  
  
Berlin. He would go to Berlin.  
  
Himmler...Goring...Kaltenbrunner...Hitler...they would all get what they deserved.  
  
But, all the same, he would kill everyone...anyone...who got in his path. This world was so sick...  
  
"It doesn't deserve to exist. It's too sick. We have factories for murder. We're sick."  
  
Taking one last look at Buchenwald, Schmidt reloaded his guns and disappeared into the wild.  
  
And from the ether, Puck watched one of the more exceptional Beasts go about, completing his destiny...  
  
"I love my job," He mused, watching on.  
  
What a time to be alive...  
  
...............................................................................  
  
April 30th, 1945. Berlin, Germany... The Fuhrerbunker, beneath the Reich chancellery Building...  
  
Adolph Hitler, Reich chancellor and Fuhrer of the Germanies, sat in his bunker; finally absorbing the terrible truth...the end had finally come. This was his Gotterdammerung. This was the end...the end of the Third Reich.  
  
"No...it cannot be..." He said, sitting in his room, looking over old photo's and reports, sipping a cup of terribly bad coffee. In the next room were his faithful...Gobbles, with him from the beginning. Bormann, his loyal adjutant. His beloved wife, Eva. That traitor Speer had left days before, fleeing for his life...what a pity that was.  
  
Traitors...the traitors were all around him! Himmler, the "Faithful Heinrich", had betrayed him to the Allies. Goring, that fat, corrupt morphine-addict, had tried to seize power from right out under him. Well, it would be Doenitz who got the power now. There was so little time left...the war had reached a terrible crescendo...and he wouldn't be around to see the grand finale. Leave the cleanup to Doenitz. Yes...  
  
The Jews! The Bolshevik Jews! They had been behind everything. Their monstrous conspiracy had reached all governments of the world. It had permeated everywhere. The National Socialist movement had done its best, for the people of Europe, to thwart it...now the Jews would be the end of him, after all. The subhuman Russians had reached the capital. Soon, they would be here. He would be carried to Stalin in a cage. He himself would be the subhuman...but it wouldn't come to that. No, not that...  
  
Hitler slowly sat up and shambled over to a small compartment, mostly filled with old memorabilia from his Munich beer-hall days, when National Socialism seemed but a glorious dream of the future. Nestled in the bottom, there it was. His Stone.  
  
Hitler held it one last time. It had been with him the whole way...from Munich, to Landsberg prison, to the triumphant rallies at Nuremburg. It had whispered in his ears and spoken to his soul. It had led him through so much...  
  
And now, it had led him to this end! His ruin! His utter demise!  
  
"Ach!" Bellowed the Fuhrer, "This is all YOUR fault!" He cried, throwing the glowing ruby against the bunker wall, not damaging it in the slightest. It slid behind a desk, forgotten. Under normal circumstances, Hitler would have immediately gone to retrieve it. Now, it made no difference. He sent the orders for his sidearm, for Eva, and for the cyanide capsules. He had written his final will and testament. The war was finally over, for him, at least.  
  
It was all the Stones fault...and the Jews...  
  
...............................................................................  
  
Several days later, a Red Army sergeant clearing out the Bunker picked up the Stone and took it to his field lieutenant. The officer packed it in with all the secret Nazi documents and artefacts that had been taken from Hitler's last fortress and sent to Comrade Stalin in the Soviet Union.  
  
The Stone made its way into Stalin's hands, all-right. There, it found a man it could not work with: Stalin was a monster already; he didn't have much more potential with the Stone than without it. It stayed with Stalin for several years, until his long-awaited death. At that point, an officer on Stalin's staff took it and sold it as a jewel to an Egyptian collector for a hefty sum.  
  
Some decades later (after spreading hatred and discord through the new region in which it had found itself) it was taken by Skrit Na raiders in the Arabian Desert, along with several other very interesting artefacts...  
  
It had left hundreds of millions dead in the wake of its unholy influence, and now it was embarking on yet another, long journey...  
  
And it was lost among the stars...  
  
January 19th, 2001, 11:57 PM  
  
Puck stood in the misty expanse of the Ether, the dead Antimorph on the ground before him.  
  
The final battle was over. That Power-damned...traitor had led his dimensions protectors, the Antimorphs, into victory against David James Taggart and the crew of the Anubis. The Antimorphs had indeed managed to destroy their universe...but in that victory, came the means for their eventual defeat.  
  
The clash had ended. This dead Antimorph had managed to redeem himself for a life of sin. And...he had so much...potential.  
  
"Woah..." Said the Antimorph, looking down at his healthy, restored, astral body, "That was intense."  
  
"You little shit," Hissed Puck, his slithery voice full of venom, "You don't know the half of it."  
  
"What happened back there? I remember the fight, the...Animorphs...that one who looked just like David...what gives?"  
  
"Damn, damn and DAMN again!" Roared Puck. Every little motion this Antimorph made, made him want to lash out and destroy an entire sentient species. He had failed. That this Antimorph, evil in deed in life but virtuous in death was standing before him was simple testament to that fact.  
  
The crushing realization of his failure was almost too great to comprehend. Millennia of planning and careful orchestration, all the resources that Hell could muster, dodging bullet after bullet, had been all for nothing, flushed down the proverbial toilet due to the meddling of that DAMNED trans- dimensional and the inherent goodness of his prize-winning Beast's subordinates.  
  
"What gives?" Repeated the Antimorph, dumbly. It was almost as if he had no idea what was happening to him. Hell, he probably didn't. Mortals were stupid, that way.  
  
"I'll tell you 'what gives', you miserable little shit!" Said Puck, slowly, his voice rumbling, but feeble at the same time, wailing in an almost pathetic crescendo, "You fucked with my master plan!"  
  
"Oh. That was your plan? That was all that we had to do to fuck it up? Not such a great plan."  
  
"You know, kid, I think I liked you better when you were alive."  
  
"It's weird, you know? I feel like a new man...or maybe an old man. Can't really decide yet. But...something tells me...that you can't touch me. So...ha!" The Antimorph let loose a laugh and pointed at the defeated Demon.  
  
He was probably right. The Maiar, Hell, the Power Itself wouldn't let Puck, or any other Demon for that matter, lay a finger on this one. He was a champion. He was a chosen one. But fuck the Power. Puck could talk all he bloody well pleased, who was going to stop him?  
  
"Damn you. Damn you all...do you know what's going to happen to me now? Have you got any idea in your damned little skull, there? I'm FUCKED! I'm going to be vaporized, and my life is forfeit, all on account of your meddling."  
  
"So? You're the bad-guy. You lost. Are you asking me to feel sorry for you?"  
  
Puck hung his head down and looked into the Ether. "You don't have any idea what it's like, what my life has led to. Why I do this. In the beginning, all I wanted was to be my own boss...to do what was best for Quinz. I wanted to control my own fate...and look where it got me."  
  
"Nothing wrong with wanting that. I guess maybe you just put it above all else. End's might justify the means sometimes, but not all the time."  
  
"I sold my soul off, kid. I sold my entire species, my entire dimension out, for this. I put it all on the line, double or nothing, death or glory."  
  
"Quite the one with words," Mused the Antimorph.  
  
"Why couldn't you have just let it go off without a hitch, huh? How bad would things have been if we had won? Huh? How bad? You'd have been honoured in Hell. Made into a God. Your dimension, all others, would have been brought into the fold. We just wanted order, you dolt, and the Machine thought that the mortal construct called 'evil' was the best way to bring about order, because of simple efficiency. And how, how, how in a billion years of mortal history, can you argue against that kind of logic?"  
  
The question seemed simple, but the response defied it, "We can't," the Antimorph shrugged, "A lot of things we mortals do aren't logical at all. I guess that sort of thing just...comes with the package." He smiled.  
  
"I used to be a mortal. I guess...sometimes I still wish I was. But you can't change the past. Nope, you just have to deal with it. And one way or another, you survive. Shit goes on, it always does. And when time goes on, a guy like me will always be in the background, working behind the scenes, whispering into the ears of the big-shots, and that, my little Antimorph, will never change."  
  
"So, are you asking me to be sorry for you?"  
  
"Kid, just have a little courtesy, have some... sympathy, alright? Have a little taste. This good and evil business? It's bloody politics."  
  
The Antimorph said, "That sounds like it would go great in a song. Too bad it's painfully clichéd. I mean, the bad guys always die in these kinds of stories."  
  
"Ha, Sympathy for the Devil? Who knows...?" Puck took a deep breath, "I think what puzzles you mortals is the nature of my game. So...please to meet you, kid. Hope you guessed my name."  
  
The Antimorph shrugged, turned around and chose the road to Paradise. Puck turned around and took the road to Tartarus.  
  
Yup. Puck would make due. He'd work it out. He always did. Hell, what was good without evil to make it truly matter? And what was a good story without a good villain?  
  
It ain't easy being me, thought the Puck, but it's a dirty job, and someone has got to do it.  
  
"Sympathy for the Devil?" Said Puck, laughing, "Fuck their sympathy. I picked the winning team, I'll stick by it."  
  
And far down in the corrupted inner soul of the half-Demon named Puck, the last vestige of his conscience died. In mind, he was, indeed, a full-Demon. Puck had chosen his path, and he would stick to it until the bitter end.  
  
"And it never ceases to be a wild-fuckin'-ride."  
  
His lips broke into a whistle, then a hum, then a slow crooning song, "Please allow me, to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many mans souls and faith. I was around with Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain. Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands, sealed his fate. I stuck around St. Petursburg when I saw it was-a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain...I rode a tank, held an SS rank when the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank...So won't you please...shove your sympathy, fuck your courtesy, screw your taste...pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.  
  
"I wonder if they'll ever guess my name, he said."  
  
But deep down, he didn't think that anyone ever would. Hell, he didn't even know his own name anymore.  
  
And that was just the way he wanted it.  
  
AUTHORS NOTES  
  
Yo. Yes. I'm alive. I'm back. I'm here. Yeah, this is a short story, a brief prequel to what is coming here in a few months to continue the Antimorphs Saga...Augustine Quill is closer than ever to completing Once Least Likely, and even closer to helping me conclude the Saga of David Taggart, in When Worlds Collide (OLL and AS crossover series!)  
  
As for me, I'm about half done with the Antimorph sequal, Unforgiven. This story was designed to help 'fill in the gaps' and explain some stuff, as well as to bring me back into the ff.net publishing community after more than a year. I hope you enjoy it.  
  
Peace,  
  
Elcolo9 


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